Entropy - again!

1.  Jannah

 

So you believe that at the end your whole
life might flash by; instead I'd rather cling
to one dear scene, some sentimental thing,
a talisman to fend my fading soul
from bland oblivion, not paradise
regained  but heaven in the here and now.
Across the smoke-grey limestone hills look how
the colours change as slowly daylight dies -
first golden, then peach-pink, now dusky mauve;
aquamarine, the eastern sky; the sea,
a deep turquoise. Amongst our wine and laughter
the first stars sparkle quietly; above,
a plump moon dotes on human revelry:
bliss is now - not desultory hereafter.

2. Gehenna

Then the night was filled with quiet laughter,
we drank and feasted underneath the stars;
Who amongst us dreaded life hereafter
with Venus watching over sleeping Mars?

The gods are dead, yet devils haunt our dreams

and twisted thoughts float-up to horrify
the soul; awake, we hear tormented screams
of those cast down. No love can mollify
such terrors; down the empty streets at daybreak
we run until our broken ribs might burst;
behind us shadows creep, a cancerous ache,
we rave at God, lament that we are cursed.

A golden morning dawns - our time is finished
yet we live on, forever diminished.

Erm....  I wrote about 'Adaptation' acknowledging that it comes over as a weak attempt to appear cleverer than I really am.  These two sonnets show another area of weakness in my writing - a tendency towards over-effusion or to put it less politely, glurge. The American poet and historian, Quincy Lehr, introduced me to the term which is defined as follows:

The word glurge originated with the urban legend debunkers at the Web site snopes.com, who describe it as "chicken soup with several cups of sugar mixed in." The following post to the alt.usage.english newsgroup explains the origins of the term:

Glurge is a term specific to snopes.com, coined in 1998. Already in its short lifespan it has reached across the Internet and has appeared in the print media a number of times, and it may well soon make the final breakthrough by appearing in dictionaries as a bona fide entry. The word was invented by Patricia Chapin, a member of the urban legends discussion mailing list run in conjunction with this site. At a loss for words to describe the retching sensation this then-unnamed category of stories subjected her to, she fashioned a word that simultaneously named the genre and described its effect.

I'm afraid to admit that there are definitely a few cups of sugar in the soup here, achieved mainly through the use of garishly colourful language and a strong tendency towards 'the blissfull' in the first poem, and a paper-thin, but all pervasive, numinousness in the second.


Did I really include these two in a manuscript I sent to Barefoot Muse last month; have I lost my mind? Well they're not going to get into print or at least they should not. I do have a weakness for the heartfelt, which in real-life does manifest itself in a need to be kind which is fine; in my writing though, all that happens is I end up producing reasonably crafted sentimental drivel.

Note to self - DON'T DO IT AGAIN!